Snowed in for Christmas

Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

Jett

I CAN’T STOP SHIVERING.

Ben gets me back to the house. I barely remember the walk. It’s a blur of cold and pain. Every step hurts. My body doesn’t want to move. But something about his firm hand on my arm keeps me going. He doesn’t speak, just tows me along, letting me walk as slowly as I need to as long as we keep moving forward. His presence beside me is like a warm blanket. As long as he stays close, as long as he keeps encouraging me, I can keep moving no matter how much it hurts.

It’s a weird feeling, but I’m too cold and miserable to question it. My clothes are soaked. Sitting in the snow made everything worse. Once I was down there, I couldn’t get back up, not until Ben appeared and forced me up. I was prepared to sit there and whittle until the snow covered me up and buried me alive. It nearly became peaceful. The cold seemed to retreat. It was still there, but it bothered me less and less. I stopped whittling as sleepiness stole into my body, luring me into a nap.

I very nearly gave in and surrendered to that nap when Ben appeared. I wanted to be angry, but honestly, the second I saw him marching toward me my whole body jolted awake. He was like a superhero walking straight out of a comic book movie, an impossible savior strolling in exactly when I needed him the most.

“What were you whittling?” Ben asks after we’ve been walking for a while. It feels like a while, anyway. With my head hanging, I can’t tell how far we’ve gone.

I also can’t tell if he actually cares. Maybe he simply wants me to prove I’m alive. Either way, I answer.

“Not sure,” I say. “Just wanted to whittle.”

“Have you whittled before?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Used to whittle all the time. I was a bad kid, always needed to be doing something. My mom figured if I was whittling I couldn’t be doing something worse.”

Ben chuckles beside me, and it’s strangely heartening. That low, quiet laugh nestles itself in my chest like a flicker of flame, warming me from the inside out. It feels a little easier to keep walking when I take my next shambling step.

He doesn’t force me to talk more, apparently satisfied that I’m coherent enough to keep going. It feels like we trudge through the snow forever. Did I really wander this far? Did I walk several miles before I quit? Distance and time are fuzzy concepts out here in the snow.

“Did I get close?” I say.

“Hm?”

“To town,” I say. “Did I get close to town?”

He laughs again, a short chuckle, but I’m quickly becoming addicted to the sound. When he responds, it’s blunt, but not actually unkind. I didn’t realize there was a difference until now.

“No,” he says. “You didn’t get close. Town is several miles off. You were headed in the correct direction, but I don’t think a walk like that is possible without skis or snowshoes today.”

“I wanted chips.”

I can feel him looking at me, even if I don’t lift my head to meet his eyes.

“The chips,” I say. “The bag I ruined. I wanted a new bag. I thought I could walk into town and…”

“Even if you had made it to town, I doubt any of the shops are open right now. There haven’t been any plows. I haven’t even seen an emergency vehicle. Everyone is waiting out the snow.”

“Everyone except us.”

“Yes, so it seems.”

I glance up when the road beneath my feet starts to slant gently upward. He’s leading me up the driveway, the house suddenly waiting just ahead. I blink and find myself shuffling past my car buried in the driveway. Ben lets go of my arm for a second so he can punch in the code on the door, and I shiver and hug myself.

He glances back at me, his glasses clouded with fog. “It’s okay. We’re home. You’re going to be alright, Jett.”

For some reason, when he says it, I actually believe it. Still, I waver like a reed in the wind while I wait for him to punch in the code and open the door. He pauses on the threshold, looking at me for a moment like he’s debating something. Then he takes my arm again and guides me inside.

I sigh the moment the warmth hits me. I stand on the welcome mat shivering and holding myself. I don’t bother trying to get out of my wet clothing or kicking the snow off my shoes. I simply stand there, closing my eyes in bliss as the heat hits me.

I hear Ben moving around, but I don’t realize what he’s doing until I feel him untying my shoes. I almost jerk backward when I open my eyes and find him kneeling on the welcome mat in front of me.

“Wh-what are you doing?” I say.

He pauses to look up at me, and there’s something about the angle, about this view of him below me, his eyes peering straight up at me, that warms me more than the house’s central heating ever could.

“You have to get these shoes off,” Ben says. “They’re even more soaked than I thought. Go ahead. You can lean on my head if you need to.”

It takes my brain several moments to put all the pieces together and understand the implications. Gingerly, I set my hand on his head. His hair is surprisingly soft given how short he keeps it. Some insane instinct encourages me to curl my fingers and cling to it, but I hold back, resting my palm against the top of his head so I can use him for balance as I step out of my shoe.

My heart is pounding. I have to repeat the whole operation on the other side — and it does not get easier even though I know it’s coming this time. There are too many factors working against me: our positions, the touching, my hazy, freezing, unguarded brain. It all combines into a flush of confusion that washes through my body and tumbles around my stomach.

I breathe a little easier when he stands up and we’re eye to eye again. If Ben noticed my floundering, he doesn’t comment on it. He looks me up and down coolly, grimacing at what he finds.

“Well, the shoes were the worst bit,” he says, “and you’re still standing, so that’s good, but everything else is soaked too.” He sighs. “Come on, we can’t leave you like this.”

He takes my arm again, and when did that gesture become so casual? He tows me around like this is how we’ve always walked, like I never move on my own. The stairs prove a challenge. I have to leave my stick behind and cling to the railing to hobble up them. I don’t realize where Ben is taking me until we reach the bathroom and he sits me down on the toilet. He reaches past me, fiddling with the faucets of the tub, and I can’t help but notice the way he’s almost draped over my lap.

I look away, but it feels like it takes ages before Ben finally stands up straight again.

“Okay, stay right there,” he says. “Jett, are you listening? Don’t move. Stay there.”

I should be offended or annoyed that he’s ordering me around like this, but all I can do is nod. He bustles out of the bathroom, and my shoulders sink away from my ears. I must be really out of it from the snow and the cold because my brain is stuck on that image of him bent over me or kneeling under me. My fingers tingle from the softness of his hair. My brain produces an extremely unhelpful image of running my hands through that hair while Ben is kneeling before me, but definitely not to take off my shoes. Down there in the entry hall, he was basically at the perfect height to…

These thoughts are really not helping, even if they are warming me up. Between that and the central heating, my body is thawing out. I shiver in my wet clothing, but it’s not nearly as bad as it was when I was sitting on that bridge. Even my brain is thawing out, shame creeping in as I recall the humiliating ordeal of Ben all but carrying me back to the house.

I startle when he returns to the bathroom. I realize I’ve been doing nothing but thinking about him the entire time he was gone, which makes being face to face with the guy oddly embarrassing.

But Ben is all business, as usual. He sets a pile of clothes on the sink beside me, my clothes. Then he kneels down and starts peeling my socks off my wet feet.

I don’t catch up with what’s happening until he stands and starts taking my hoodies off.

“Hey, wait, what the hell are you doing?” I snap.

He doesn’t even pause, pulling off one hoodie and unzipping the next one, but Ben doesn’t meet my eyes as he speaks.

“You have to get out of these wet clothes,” he says. “I’m running a bath. You should soak in there and warm up. We also need to see if there’s any frostbite, though with how you’re walking and moving, I think you’re okay.”

I’m down to my T-shirt. Ben pulls it off before I can complain, and suddenly I’m sitting on the toilet shirtless. Ben looks away, dipping his hand in the water filling the tub. He looks at the water instead of at me when he speaks.

“The, uh, the jeans as well,” he says. “They’re wet.”

I’ve hooked up with men, women, enbies. It’s never mattered to me. But the idea of taking my pants off in front of Ben leaves me frozen where I sit.

Ben huffs out a sigh.

“Listen,” he says, “I don’t like this either, okay? We’ll just do it quickly and get you in the tub. I won’t look. But you can’t stay here like this. You’re nearly hypothermic.”

“Quick,” I say, numb.

“Yes. Quick. Very quick.”

He doesn’t look at me as he approaches. His eyes are down and to the side. He glances at me just long enough to find the clasp of my jeans and pull the zipper down. He grabs the jeans and the boxers beneath, but pauses there.

“I’m going to need you to lift your hips,” he says. “We’ll go fast. Ready?”

Hell no, I’m not ready. I sit there swallowing, contemplating the fact that I’m going to be naked in front of him very, very soon and there’s nothing I can do about it. My fingers are too frozen for a delicate operation.

But eventually I nod.

“Okay,” Ben says. “Three, two…”

He goes on two. I lift my hips on instinct, and my pants and boxers come down in a rush.

True to his word, Ben turns his back to me instantly, but it doesn’t really improve this moment. I stand up, hoping to end the torture as quickly as I can, but the second I rise I wobble on my frozen feet and grab his shoulder to catch myself.

“Damn it,” Ben hisses under his breath. A moment later, he adds, more loudly this time, “I’m going to have to help you into the tub.”

All I wanted was a freaking bag of chips. Now my mom’s boyfriend’s kid who’s unexpectedly hot is stripping me down and putting me in the bathtub.

I’m starting to think I screwed up.